This globular porcelain teapot is a miniature item, intended for a child’s set, for use in a doll’s house or as a novelty object for display. Such minatures became particularly popular among gentleman collectors in the Netherlands. The teapot features underglaze cobalt blossoms and foliage painted in China, which were further enhanced with overpainted or ‘clobbered’ decoration in Western Europe. The distinctive, coloured decoration often clashed with the original Chinese design which led to the style’s derogatory name, as Victorian scholars regarded the garish over-decoration as a total disregard for the original Chinese blue-and-white designs. Although early ‘clobbering’ was limited to dark, primary colours such as green and red, technical innovations regarding the range and quality of enamel colours between the 1770s to the 1830s allowed for evermore colourful wares and decorative appeal. The light green ‘ground’ on this teapot’s surface would have been impossible to recreate in the first half of the 18th century and was thus added at a later stage.
